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Designing a Curriculum to Broaden Middle School Students’ Ideas and Interest in Engineering As the 21st century progresses, engineers will play critical roles in addressing complex societal problems such as climate change and nutrient pollution. Research has shown that more diverse teams lead to more creative and effective solutions (Smith-Doerr et al., 2017). However, while some progress has been made in increasing the number of women and people of color, 83% of employed engineers are male and 68% of engineers are white (NSF & NCSES, 2019). Traditional K–12 approaches to engineering often emphasize construction using a trial-and-error approach (ASEE, 2020). Although this approach may appeal to some students, it may alienate other students who then view engineering simply as “building things.” Designing engineering experiences that broaden students’ ideas about engineering, may help diversify the students entering the engineering pipeline. To this end, we developed Solving Community Problems with Engineering (SCoPE), an engineering curriculum that engages seventh-grade students in a three-week capstone project focusing on nutrient pollution in their local watershed. SCoPE engages students with the problem through local news articles about nutrient pollution and images of algae covered lakes, which then drives the investigation into the detrimental processes caused by excess nutrients entering bodies of water from sources such as fertilizer and wastewater. Students research the sources of nutrient pollution and potential solutions, and use simulations to investigate key variables and optimize the types of strategies for effectively decreasing and managing nutrient pollution to help develop their plans. Throughout the development process, we worked with a middle school STEM teacher to ensure the unit builds upon the science curriculum and the activities would be engaging and meaningful to students. The problem and location were chosen to illustrate that engineers can solve problems relevant to rural communities. Since people in rural locations tend to remain very connected to their communities throughout their lives, it is important to illustrate that engineering could be a relevant and viable career near home. The SCoPE curriculum was piloted with two teachers and 147 seventh grade students in a rural public school. Surveys and student drawings of engineers before and after implementation of the curriculum were used to characterize changes in students’ interest and beliefs about engineering. After completing the SCoPE curriculum, students’ ideas about engineers’ activities and the types of problems they solve were broadened. Students were 53% more likely to believe that engineers can protect the environment and 23% more likely to believe that they can identify problems in the community to solve (p < 0.001). When asked to draw an engineer, students were 1.3 times more likely to include nature/environment/agriculture (p < 0.01) and 3 times more likely to show engineers helping people in the community (p< 0.05) Additionally, while boys’ interest in science and engineering did not significantly change, girls’ interest in engineering and confidence in becoming an engineer significantly increased (Cohen’s D = 0.28, p<0.05). The SCoPE curriculum is available on PBS LearningMedia: https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/solving-community-problems-with-engineering/ This project was funded by NSF through the Division of Engineering Education and Centers, Research in the Formation of Engineers program #202076. References American Society for Engineering Education. (2020). Framework for P-12 Engineering Learning. Washington, DC. DOI: 10.18260/1-100-1153 National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2019). Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2019. Special Report NSF 17-310. Arlington, VA. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21321/. Smith-Doerr, L., Alegria, S., & Sacco, T. (2017). How Diversity Matters in the US Science and Engineering Workforce: A Critical Review Considering Integration in Teams, Fields, and Organizational Contexts, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 3, 139-153. 

Implementing high-quality professional learning on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues is a massive scaling challenge. Integrating dynamic support using natural language processing (NLP) into equity teaching simulations may allow for more responsive, personalized training in this field. In this study, we trained machine learning models on participants’ text responses in an equity teaching simulation (494 users; 988 responses) to detect certain text features related to equity. We then integrated these models into the simulation to provide dynamic supports to users during the simulation. In a pilot study (N = 13), we found users largely thought the feedback was accurate and incorporated the feedback in subsequent simulation responses. Future work will explore replicating these results with larger and more representative samples 

Role-plays of interpersonal interactions are essential to learning across professions, but effective simulations are difficult to create in typical learning management systems. To empower educators and researchers to advance simulation-based pedagogy, we have developed the Digital Clinical Simulation Suite (DCSS, pronounced "decks"), an open-source platform for rehearsing for improvisational interactions. Participants are immersed in vignettes of professional practice through video, images, and text, and they are called upon to improvisationally make difficult decisions through recorded audio and text. Tailored data displays support participant reflection, instructional facilitation, and educational research. DCSS is based on six design principles: 1) Community Adaptation, 2) Masked Technical Complexity, 3) Authenticity of Task, 4) Improvisational Voice, 5) Data Access through "5Rs", and 6) Extensible AI Coaching. These six principles mean that any educator should be able to create a scenario that learners should engage in authentic professional challenges using ordinary computing devices, and learners and educators should have access to data for reflection, facilitation, and development of AI tools for real-time feedback. In this paper, we describe the architecture of DCSS and illustrate its use and efficacy in cases from online courses, colleges of education, and K-12 schools.